Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductor layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
One of the important drivers for increasing performance in semiconductor structures is the higher levels of integration of circuits. This is accomplished by miniaturizing or shrinking device sizes on a given chip. For example, the sizes of gate structures in transistors have continually been scaled down. However, although existing processes for manufacturing transistors have generally been adequate for their intended purposes, as device scaling-down continues, they have not been entirely satisfactory in all respects.